


midday rendezvous

by idaate



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 02:16:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11431077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idaate/pseuds/idaate
Summary: [ MAJOR V3 SPOILERS ]There is a metal bench across the street from where Yumeno, Harukawa, and Saihara decide to live.





	midday rendezvous

There's a metal bench across the street from where Yumeno, Harukawa, and Saihara decide to live.

It's seen far better days - certainly, it's pretty rusted and more than a little bit wobbly. Sometimes, when Yumeno isn't out of MP, she'll go outside and sit on it and jiggle her legs to make the structure shake underneath her. Saihara scolds her half-heartedly, during those sometimes, because the bench is pretty high up from the ground and the ground itself is rocky and unkempt, like everything else in their town. It's fitting, though - out of sight, out of mind.

(the best way to stay out of team _danganronpa's_ reaches after all)

When they crawled out of Kiibo’s grave they had dusted themselves off and ran. They ran and ran and ran and ran until their tears ran dry and settled down in the first place they got to that didn’t know their name. Apparently, that meant a ghost town that everyone had abandoned the moment _Danganronpa_ had become the only thing that mattered and world peace had been long since accomplished for everyone but its participants. Saihara thinks it’s funny that in a world so accepting of times without war, everyone could care less about the lives of those behind the screen.

Maybe it’s because there’s no war that everyone wants to die so badly. There’s no point dying anymore if you don’t do it in a cool way, after all. Thoughts like that make Saihara scratch his chin with his hands and frown.

Harukawa sets herself to work on fixing everything around them. At first that starts with the house, scrubbing it's walls sparkling clean and replacing floorboards and tiles and fixing the sink that hasn't been used in years while Yumeno takes an MP recharging nap on Saihara's lap. She throws herself into her tasks with a vigor that's almost scary (maybe scratch out the 'almost') and if Saihara didn't think that stopping her was a worse idea, he would've.

It’s somewhat comforting to go to bed in a house with wooden boards creaking underneath the weight of sleeping bags stolen from eight towns over while on the run and hearing the determined _tap_ , _tap_ , _tap_ of Harukawa’s hammer against the wall. Saihara turns over in his bag and stares at the ceiling. He wonders how much it would take for it to collapse and bury them underneath it’s weight. He wonders if anyone would notice.

Harukawa finishes the house within their first four months, the blazing summer sun that greeted them on arrival now mellowing out with the chills and colors of autumn.

Saihara asks, "What next?"

Harukawa says, "Everything else."

'Everything else' starts with the bench across the street, and Harukawa scrubs it clean till the rust is a myth and the wobbly leg isn't so wobbly anymore-at-all. Yumeno pouts a touch as she swings her legs from it, mutters something about how she wishes things weren't a bother, but doesn't shovel out the complaint of being out of MP and Saihara knows that Harukawa can chalk that one up to a win.

Saihara walks outside and lays on the metal bench one day, the day that Harukawa decided to go out and replace all the light bulbs that she could find.

("which light bulbs?"

"you'll see when it's done")

The metal is hot and cold against his back, a feeling that sets his teeth in a line as he inhales through his nose and wonders how the metal in a machinery bay would feel. Probably colder, he notes, because this metal bench was outside in autumn, and that one was inside in probably-summer and Saihara hadn't been to many machinery bays, but he assumed that cold was the standard. Kiibo had been the one to lie across the metal length, after all, not Saihara.

Well. Kiibo and...that person.

Saihara feels his nose burn and accounts it to the autumn chill. He shudders, and accounts that to the autumn chill as well and not the chill of guilt that he's felt since Yumeno made a comment on how "hey, Ouma-kun didn't have any friends when he died, did he?" as they sat around a campfire, running away from the ruins of a robot's innards.

Harukawa had chewed her lip and said "Nope."

The phony detective had pulled at a strand of hair and nodded in agreement, and that had been that (except for the weight on his shoulders that was there now).

"Hey," he says to nothing with his eyes still closed, resting against the metal bench, and the wind picks up, "I..."

What? What are you? Sorry? Too late for that. Would've been your friend? That was a lie he would've laughed at more than anyone else.

Saihara settles for, "I hope you didn't go straight to hell or anything like that. I think you deserved to make it...to heaven." A pause, and then, "I think."

The autumn breeze stills for a minute, like someone taking a pause in surprise, but Saihara scolds himself for thinking that ghosts would spend their time lingering around a shell of a person, if there ever was such a thing as ghosts. Such a ghost would have to be abnormally interested in him, he thinks.

He laughs, because no one would ever be able to find him interesting ever again, and the wind picks up all over again. It must’ve picked the weight off of his shoulders, too, because he feels himself able to take in a breath of fresh, crisp, delicious air without guilt for the first time in...well, as long as he remembers, anyway. Who knows how long that actually is, considering what Team _Danganronpa_ did, but Saihara bets it’s for a long enough time anyway.

He curls his spine against the metal press (bench) and counts his blessings.

Harukawa comes back in what's either two minutes or two hours, says she's finished with the light bulbs for today, and forces him back inside. Yumeno's prepared cups of ramen, and Saihara thinks it's the best meal he's ever tasted.

**Author's Note:**

> From one of the asks I got on tumblr/twitter for a writing meme; saiouma and "things you said when it was over". Feel free to follow me on tumblr at idaate or on twitter @oumatxt !


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